A desire to share what I love and encourage others!

Month: February 2017

Travel Bug: A strong desire to travel and see new places… It’s almost as bad a the flu!

Ok, maybe not the flu, but sense I returned from Bali back in December, I’m dying to take to the skies again and go someplace new (which as we know is just about anywhere for me). So of course Megan and I started a list. A list of places we would like to go and things to do, which includes but it not limited too Spain and Portugal, Iceland, Ireland, England, and many more.

As I picked Bali as a long trip, Megan get to pick next- and it’s decided -Spain and Portugal will be the next extended trip (within the next year-ish, fingers crossed)!

But what do you do when your very dear friend is hostel hopping and performing around Europe and you want to get out of the cold bleak winter of New York? You pick a city on their tour, book a quick flight and a nearby hostel, tell your job your are taking a long weekend, and find your travel duffel. #EdinburghBound

Travel with friends so you have someone to take all this great pics of you and to enjoy a morning coffee with.

Travel in the off season if you are looking for better rates and don’t book the first flight you find, check for different deals and airlines. Deals are out there if you are willing to take the time to hunt.

Hostelworld.com has become my best friend when it comes to looking and booking accommodations. Don’t go for those main stream hotels, staying in a hostel or home-stay will save you money AND give you an amazing way to connect to the people, country, and culture you are visiting!

Remember your guide book! (I promise this will be a whole post on it’s own sometime soon), but when you are headed out on an adventure it’s always good to have one in your back pocket. Preferably a guide book that has been read, dog-eared, and loved on a little.

You can catch this bug fast and symptoms can include irritability, wonder, feeling frigidity, and a strong desire to do something kinda drastic… like cut or dye your hair, buy something big, or… wait for it… TRAVEL TO A NEW PLACE! 😀

(what does this have to do with “Adopt Don’t Shop” the animal rescue and adoption slogan?…. I’m getting there)

Well, back in my high school health days, 1. I absolutely hated the class (sorry Mrs. Bowen) 2. At one point during the course we had to “adopt” egg babies to learn responsibility and what it’s like having a child (although an egg is nothing like a kid I would imagine and we were still gonna spell with people… so again, sorry!).

ANYWAY. I hate kids. (there’s a lot of hate in this section sorry [not sorry]) So the last thing I wanted to do was have an egg kid and pretend to take care of it for the grade. Like I was absolutely against it. I realized young that it went against my personal morals and beliefs. I didn’t want kids and I wasn’t going to have someone tell me I had to. I know it’s an egg but the principal of the thing!

I had to do the assignment… so I HAD to come up with an acceptable alternative to an egg baby.

THINKING

THINKING

I would adopt a egg kitten. I very young kitten that was alone and needed to be fed every 4 hours by a syringe, that needed to be watched all the time cause it could eat something, and would hopefully sleep…. MY sort of perfect come back to a child.

The project was approved and so began my 1. school career of manipulating projects to be what I wanted and 2. vision for an adult like where I had NO CHILDREN (sorry friends with kids, I don’t understand your life choices) but I did have a beautiful little white kitten.

Fast forward about 15 years…. and KITTEN!

I could basically stop right here, swamp you with kitten photos, and make my point.

But that wouldn’t be fun to read (I’ll still bombard you with pictures though).

I’ve always wanted a cat of my own. For the past several years I’ve wanted a little white girl kitten to name Tiffany (yes, like the jewelry company and deck her out in teal and blue) Carpathian (if you Google “Carpathian Kitten Loss” you will understand). I’ve waited for the right time, with the right people, the right apartment, and the right financial situation… and it’s finally come true.

I started following a local New York kitten/cat rescue and foster Instagram accounts a while back, thinking maybe I’d volunteer or come across a kitten I loved (check them out on IG @littlewanderersnyc). The latter happened. I’d just gotten back from Bali and found out one of my roommates was moving out. So of course to was scrolling on Instagram to take my mind off the stress that would be coming my way (lol) and I came across a post about these 2 little white kitten sisters who were up for adoption. It was 10:30 at night and I literally emailed the adoption inquire link right then and there. They got back to me in minutes with the form I needed to fill out to start the adoption process.

OK, form filled out and emailed back in…. waiting, waiting, waiting. A whole week and nothing. I was concerned, was I not FIT to adopt? Was the kitten already going home to someone else? So I emailed again… and they were just behind due to the holidays! Alright I can work with that. I keep waiting and after the new year the gears start to turn. I was actively following all the action on Instagram and talking with several different people at the adoption group. One woman had the kitten, so we talked about what she was eating and how to trim claws and choose litter. Another woman was the accountant and we coordinated to get the adoption fee, so stamp needed as she lived 3 blocks away(!) talk about local. And someone else about the organization and the history of the kitten and particulars of adopting. This kitten and her sister had been through a lot in just 4 little months. They were rescued from the stairwell a crack house where they were being sold for drug money (so the tail goes) and there were malnourished and infected and not looking good. You would never know if you saw them now!

Finally it was all said and done. Kitten was healthy, fixed, and microchipped. She was active and playful and ready for a furever home. Meanwhile I had gone and ordered 5 different toys and scratchers and collars and food and litter and a bed and a box and a carrier and a blanket and basically anything else I could think of that this kitten would need or want. With of course, as much as possible being in teal or sky blue.

On a Thursday after work in the middle of one of the most frustrating weeks of my year, my fabulous roommate picked me up and we adventured into Yonkers to retrieve the kitten. We arrive, we play with the cat, we take a “Going Home Furever” picture and just like that we are back in the car, kitten and all.

Now I spend my nights and days off playing with mice and feathers on a string or being forced to take a nap cause I’m pinned down by a little white fur ball. Tiffany is friendly, playful and totally curious. She’s not a cat that will run and hide from people in the apartment and once I got a nail trimmer I started looking like a happy cat parent.

So between Bali tales and running experiences… I’ll be sharing the adventures of Tiffany Carpathia or “Ms. Tiff”!

I was in love with something that didn’t exist. Maybe it existed at some point in time but not anymore. For years now I’d been holding onto a dream, a fleeting memory that had failed to keep up with the times and was no longer reality.

How many times do we do this? Remember something or someone as they were in some distant time and fail to see how it’s changed.

This failure can promptly smack us in the face when you run headlong into that person or place and are shocked to find you hardly recognize it. There are familiar landmarks but everything that you had been holding onto in your mind is no longer. Why does this happen? It’s a way of coping, a form of hoping… trying not to grow up and change. Wishing things would go back and be just as they were turning a time when you thought everything was perfect and just what you wanted.

As I grow up and confront more and more in my life, I’m learning to accept this change. We can never go back. We can never be something that was in the past. People change and so do places. One can walk through the halls of their high school, but it’s not the same high school as when they were there. One can see a familiar face and rush in for a familiar embrace, only to find it’s hardly the same… that person has years and experiences on them and they are not the same person you once knew.

Looking at it from the other side, I’m no longer the person I was 6 months ago or 13 years ago. Views, values, priorities, relationships, goals, dreams and desires… it’s all changes. Does that mean I’m a terrible horrible no good very bad person? No, but if others can’t accept the changes it sure seems that way.

It’s February after all, the month of obnoxiously large teddy bears, chocolates, diamond, and hears. All the commercial ways we say “I love you”… and here I am talking about change and loss. But these go hand in hand. So why bring this up?

Well, because it’s important and I’ve been running into it right and left over the past few months. It doesn’t mean any of us are becoming bad people, but maybe it means our paths are going different ways. Perhaps they will intertwine again, maybe they won’t, but we will always have the memories. And as long as we remember the memories are not the present or the future, but a beautiful past, we can happily hold onto them.

All of my fiends from 10 years ago are engaged and getting married or still in school. They all have someone and I don’t. But I’m traveling the world and racing hundreds of miles against myself. How can I relate to them and they to me? What we have chosen to prioritize has set our lives in very different directions. Can we find a balance? Can we still find common ground without just taking about the past? Maybe some of us can… others no. There are people in my past that I can’t even be in the same room with and others I can see and it feels like no time has passed.

Is it best to let them fall away? Or do we fight to hold onto something that may never be again?

With only just hinting at my life stories, I’ll leave this here for you to think on and apply to your own. The short story- Don’t fall in love with a memory, fall in love with the present and try to keep up.